. Holbert fled, and his
innocent wife went with him. Further report we read in the Democratic
_Evening Post_ of Vicksburg as follows: "When the two Negroes were
captured, they were tied to trees, and while the funeral pyres were
being prepared they were forced to suffer the most fiendish tortures.
The blacks were forced to hold out their hands while one finger at a
time was chopped off. The fingers were distributed as souvenirs. The
ears of the murderers were cut off. Holbert was beaten severely, his
skull was fractured, and one of his eyes, knocked out with a stick, hung
by a shred from the socket.... The most excruciating form of punishment
consisted in the use of a large corkscrew in the hands of some of the
mob. This instrument was bored into the flesh of the man and the woman,
in the arms, legs, and body, and then pulled out, the spirals tearing
out big pieces of raw, quivering flesh every time it was withdrawn."
In the summer of this same year Georgia was once more the scene of a
horrible lynching, two Negroes, Paul Reed and Will Cato--because of the
murder of the Hodges family six miles from the town on July 20--being
burned at the stake at Statesville under unusually depressing
circumstances. In August, 1908, there were in Springfield, Illinois,
race riots of such a serious nature that a force of six thousand
soldiers was required to quell them. These riots were significant
not only because of the attitude of Northern laborers toward Negro
competition, but also because of the indiscriminate killing of Negroes
by people in the North, this indicating a genuine nationalization of the
Negro Problem. The real climax of violence within the period, however,
was the Atlanta Massacre of Saturday, September 22, 1906.

Throughout the summer the heated campaign of Hoke Smith for
the governorship capitalized the gathering sentiment for the
disfranchisement of the Negro in the state and at length raised the race
issue to such a high pitch that it leaped into flame. The feeling was
intensified by the report of assaults and attempted assaults by Negroes,
particularly as these were detailed and magnified or even invented by an
evening paper, the _Atlanta News_, against which the Fulton County Grand
Jury afterwards brought in an indictment as largely responsible for the
riot, and which was forced to suspend publication when the business men
of the city withdrew their support. Just how much foundation there was
to the rumors may b